Corporate Blogs - How to Structure a Good Home Page

Displaying summaries of many articles on the first page as opposed to presenting each posting’s full content may serve to attract users.

In creating homepage designs for blogs, you typically have two options:

• Posting each article in its entirety on the first page so users can read it all without having to click to an article.
• Providing article summaries on the first page that link to the full content on secondary pages.

When managing a corporate blog, it is important to remember that the number of postings may eventually reach the hundreds or thousands depending on the size of the organization. Clearly, not every posting will fit on a single page. This is where you need article summaries linking to the full post in the archives.

Web Usability Design columnist Jakob Nielsen discusses in detail his findings through an eye-tracking study of how people read the “official” weblogs of corporations. His gaze plots diagram how users read the front page of several corporate blogs.

In short, his study revealed that the blogs featuring full articles on the front page lost the interest of users after the first post, whereas the blogs offering summaries on the homepage were able to attract the user to browse through more, if not all of the article summaries.

Through Nielsen’s study and general experience, corporate blogs fare much better with summaries rather than full articles on their homepage. Article summaries allow blogs to post more in a shorter page-length, thus exposing users to a broad selection of topics.

With more topics available in the same, if not shorter amount of space, users are more likely to find something that interests them. This will entice them to click through to read more, as opposed to abandoning the blog after the first full-length article failed to appeal to them. Few people will actually continue browsing after exhausting their interest on the first posting.

So for the most part, it is best to include summaries on the homepage of your corporate blog, especially if you have a wide product range with many topics to discuss. People are simply not fully interested in everything, but may prefer browsing through to find the one thing they are.

In the case that you do receive regular visitors that are passionate about everything your company does, you may want to post full articles as Nielsen recommends, but this is rare and unlikely. So stick to the summaries and offer a broad sample of articles in hopes of attracting a user’s interest and getting them to read on.

Increased Advertising on YP.com means more Leads

Party Jump USA has increased its online advertising with YP.com (formerly Yellowpages.com) to be included in 5 categories nationwide (formerly only 3 categories). This means companies advertising in Party Jump USA will receive more visibility, leads, and sales for the cities they currently have Exclusive Advertising in. Party Jump USA will now be listed under:

1. Party Favors, Supplies, & Services
2. Party Supply Rental
3. Children's Party Planning & Entertainment
4. Party & Event Planning
5. Party Planning

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The New Yellowpages, YP.com

Yellowpages.com is now YP.com. It seems like all of the major websites have been doing some redesigning lately, from Google, Facebook, Youtube, and now Yellowpages. The new website YP.com starts off with a shorter URL for ease of memorization. Their search functions has improved to bring about more relevant results. The search results page has been redesigned to somewhat mimic that of Google's, with organic, or free listings on the left and paid sponsored listings on the right and top. They have also added a map function to diagram the location of the companies. All in all it seems like YP.com is more up to date than the older version, Yellowpages.com.

How Your Website is Analyzed

How do search engines work, and how do they decide which website is more relevant for a keyword? These are good questions and to find out the answer to them you must first know how search engines work and how they crawl and analyze websites. There are about two hundred factors that are taken into consideration when deciding how relevant a website is for a keyword and where it should rank. Some of these factors include how fast your website loads, the amount of content on your site, the density of the keyword, amount of pictures, video presence, feeds, meta tags, links, etc. Knowing what factors search engines use can help improve your website score and ranking.

Search engines send out spiders, or crawlers, to go through your website and collect information. You should be able to show up in the search results once these crawlers have gone through your website and indexed it in their database. This usually takes about one to three months. When search engine spiders index your site they usually don’t stay on your website for more than a couple of seconds. These crawlers travel through links to find all of your pages, therefore, it is very important to have good internal linking throughout your site. Crawlers cannot see pictures or color, they can only read and understand text and codes. It is very important to have your website coded correctly so search engine crawlers can read and understand the page. Having outdated or improper coding can contribute to a lower page score.

Some of the easiest ways to optimize your site is by choosing the correct combination of title, header, and Meta description. Each page of your website should be unique, search engines don’t like to see the same content, and will usually penalize you for copying content. Since each page should be different, it should also have different title, header, and Meta descriptions that are unique for the page. Crawlers rank the importance of keywords for a page based on the amount of times it is used, the backlinks to the page, and any off page optimization. It’s good to have a lot of content on your page, but simply putting down a bunch of keywords just to get a high ranking is going to hurt your websites usability. Search engines also take into consideration the amount of different font treatments used. Different font treatments include the style, size, color, whether it’s bold, underlined, italicized, etc. Having too many different font treatments can be bad for your page score, so it’s a good idea to keep it simple and stick with a few font treatments that make sense.

It is also important to have a good proportion of pictures on your website. Search engine crawlers like to see more than just simple text. True, crawlers can’t see pictures, but they can read a pictures tag or description. Having good alt tags can contribute to the keywords importance for the page and thus rank higher in relevance. However, you don’t want to get carried away with pictures. The more pictures you have on your website the longer it will take to load. The speed at which your website loads affects your page score and whether users will stay on your website or not. Search engine crawlers love to see videos, and will usually stay on your website a little longer to read the videos code. Videos also have descriptive text that website crawlers can read. An easy and useful way to add videos to your website is by using YouTube, which Google owns and places more importance for.

Having links on your website are also important because search engine crawlers need a way to bounce through your pages. Usually crawlers will start from your main page, or home page, and from there travel through links to your other pages. Having links to the most important pages of your website are key to getting indexed successfully. You should be careful that links are not broken because crawlers don’t like to see that. Each webpage needs to have a link directing crawlers there or else some of your pages will not get indexed. You can also use tags or descriptions for the links to direct crawlers to look for a specific keyword or phrase when indexing it. One thing that’s recommended is creating a site map for your entire site and placing the link on your home page.

Another thing search engines like to see is new content on websites. Search engines try to distinguish websites that are dynamic and in use from ones that aren’t, and will usually visit your website more frequently if they see you constantly have new content. A way to easily place new content on your website without the hassle of hiring a professional is through user comments. Companies sometimes allow user comments for products, articles, or blogs, because people like to place comments, and companies welcome them because its free content creation. Another way to get new content on your site is through feeds. For instance, if you have an off page blog you manage and want snippets of the postings to show up on your website, than you can have a feed management program like Google’s FeedBurner push the content onto your website. These are fast and easy ways to create tons of content on your website without the need of a professional.

Off page optimization matters as well and complements the work of the on page optimization. Off page optimization includes blog submission, article submission, and backlink creation. The more links you have from other websites directing to yours, the better your page rank will be. However, you should take note that having your link on websites that are spam sites or that use black hat tactics can actually be harmful to your site. If the website on which you have a backlink has a higher page rank than yours and is also relevant to your website, than that backlink would be more beneficial to your overall score. Every little piece of optimization matters in order to get a higher page score and ranking for a keyword. Search engines are just like any other company, they constantly change, and it’s recommended to keep up to date on the things they find important.

How to Grow Your Party Business

The party industry is a profitable, fun, and exciting industry to be in because of the nature of the work and the constant interaction with different people and events. Due to this, and the easiness of entering the industry, competition is always increasing. So how does a small family owned business or part-time business owner grow and expand its company? There are a lot of methods or practices that you might not be already familiar with, and that is what we will cover in this article. Some options to explore include email marketing, reminders, discounts and incentives, new products, customer interaction, business partnerships, distributors, and more.

One of the first ways any small business should start off in expanding their business is to take their business online. The amount of time people dedicate per day cruising the internet, along with all the new gadgets that allow them to do so, are evidence of a company’s need to go online. An online presence allows a business to do other things as well, like communicate to the public about the latest news, events, discounts, promotions, etc. One way a business owner can retain customers is by sending email reminders to its previous customers about their upcoming events or discounts during a particular date. An online service like Constant Contact simplifies the process so anyone can do email marketing. E-commerce and office management software’s like Rental Pad help streamline your business and reduce employee costs. Incorporating payment methods like PayPal or Google Checkout can help reduce payment-processing fees and make life easier. Business owners should take advantage of all the options available to streamline their business, make purchasing their products easier, and educate the public and employees. (Read More)

Lead in Vinyl Products

As manufacturing of products move overseas a raising concern is building amongst consumers and regulators on the presence of lead and other phthalates in inflatable manufactured games. It is recommended to check your state's regulations and specifications on the acceptable concentration of lead and phthalates allowed. There are a couple of hand-held lead test kits that can be purchased for a quick test. A simple and cost-efficient one that is recommended is the Lead Detective Paint Test Kit sold by HealthGoods.com. You can use this kit to quickly test your inflatable products to see if they comply with your state's regulations.

Upcoming Changes to Party Jump USA Online Directory

Party Jump USA has been providing online advertising for inflatable rental companies for nearly a year now and there are many great things our staff has learned from in this time. We have learned how important it is to educate rental operators on the importance of online marketing and the keys to success. We have learned how rental operators seek a directory that is affordable and valuable that will also give them a competitive advantage over other local companies. We have also learned how our competitors, mainly party rental and moonwalk rental directories don't provide this type of service, but rather, they simply provide a website to exchange links and get listed.

In the past year Party Jump USA has grown tremendously amongst the moonwalk rental industry and is reaching the 200 mark for registrations of rental operators. The website has had numerous changes and modifications in the past months because we continuously seek to improve the usability, appearance, and optimize it for organic searches. We value the input and feedback of our rental operators and customers using our website and use that feedback to improve our services. We have learned that customers visiting the website are seeking to find local companies for a range of services and not only inflatable rentals. To make the directory more meaningful for people visiting the website we will be implementing the following changes.

In our continued efforts to improve our services we will be implementing the following changes and updates to the directory.

1) Expanding the directory to include other services such as children entertainers, tent rentals, DJ service, party planners, table and chair rentals, party supply stores, photography videography service, food catering service, and more.

What will this mean?
Companies still get exclusive advertising for the city they service, there will be no other company advertised in the same city with the same category of service. Meaning, there will not be two inflatable rental companies advertised, there will be one inflatable rental company, one clown service company, one tent rental company, etc. per city.

2) Reducing advertising prices to be more competitive.

What will this mean?
In our goal to becoming the exclusive party services directory we seek to be more valuable to companies advertising, therefore, we are reducing our advertising prices to be affordable for startup companies as well as established companies.

3) Improving company profile pages with videos.

What will this mean?
Companies advertising in our directory will be able to include a video about their company on their company profile page. Companies will be able to upload or connect their videos from Youtube.

4) Implement party tips and article submissions from companies advertising in our directory.

What will this mean?
Companies advertising in our directory will be able to add their articles and party tips to our directory with direct backlinks to their company website. This will provide more information for people searching our directory as well as improve your companies popularity online.

We thank you for your support and interest in our company. We will continue to dedicate our services to improving our directory and providing a more valuable and meaningful advertising for party rental and service companies.